That's right. Dr. Harron of West Virginia was hired by personal injury lawyers to read x-rays for their asbestos lawsuits – and then he was hired to read the same x-rays for silica lawsuits. In a result that was surprising to the scientific community and a federal judge, Dr. Harron improbably diagnosed the same people as being sick from both conditions! Dr. Harron may not be able to accept his award, however. After U.S. District Judge Janis Jack questioned his diagnoses of thousands of patients as having two diseases, he sought a lawyer for himself and abruptly closed his medical practice that was dedicated exclusively to reading x-rays.

June 21, 2006

Don't You Go Testifying And ER Blues

Judge issues a restraining order
against a national medical association who a doc says has been smearing him, because he served as an expert witness in a $40 million med-mal case. Read [The Advocate]

Logjams in ERs strain hospitals: Why? Dr. Thomas R. Russell, executive director of the American College of Surgeons, says its research shows that surgeons are becoming more reluctant to perform on-call emergency services and are given discounts on liability coverage if they limit or stop performing them altogether. Read [Baltimore Sun]

Doctors Told to Stop Shaving Surgical Sites AND ... More Talk About The ER Crisis and Declining Care. "There were 113.9 [Emergency Department (ED)] visits in 2003, for example, up from 90.3 million a decade earlier. At the same time, the number of facilities available to deal with these visits has been declining. Between 1993 and 2003, the total number of hospitals in the United States decreased by 703, the number of hospital beds dropped by 198,000, and the number of EDs fell by 425." Read [Poynter Online]

"Low-risk obstetrics has been done here for 60 years, but not anymore."

Carl Hanson, chief operating officer of the county-run Minidoka Memorial Hospital in southern Idaho hospital's, explained as they get out of the baby business. Read

"I have children, and I don't know where they're at."

Rosalinda Elison, a former patient at the UC Irvine Medical Center’s fertility clinic, said after learning that that her eggs and embryos had been stolen and implanted in another woman who then gave birth to twins.

Crisis by numbers:

$4.6 million

New York state grants available to expand the use of electronic medical records. Such initiatives have been hailed nationally as a way to cut medication errors, save money and improve patient safety. LINK

$700,000

Amount raised by Fairness and Accountability in Insurance Reform to oppose malpractice limits in Arizona. LINK